Postbellum
by winter machine
Summary: "It's hard to believe something this fragile survived a war."  Addison and Archer decide what to do with what's left.   One-shot. Addison/Derek in flashback.


Afterwards, after the will has been read and the lawyers have left, Archer stands up and stretches, groaning a little. "How long do we have to do this?"

"Until we finish." She balances a legal pad on her knees, one of the Captain's ever-present mont blancs in her fist.

"I was finished three drinks ago." He beckons for her glass and refills it. It's blindingly strong, just what she needs, because she has the list and knows what's coming.

"All right, what do we have next?"

A cherry wood trunk is splayed in front of them. A similar maw opens within her at the sight of its contents.

"The famous Bradford china." Archer rummages among the well-wrapped dishes. "Hideous. Took a few centuries for the family to develop decent taste, I guess."

"Is it that bad?"

"It's atrocious, Addie." He drains the amber liquid in his tumbler. "And there's even more of it somewhere, isn't there?"

"Uh, I don't remember."

"Sure you do. Wasn't it part of your trousseau?" He pronounces the word like a punchline, raises a suggestive eyebrow. "I tried to tell our dear mother the ship had sailed on white lace."

"Archer."

"No shame in it; late bloomers always burn bright." He thumps the edge of the chest. "I lucked out, really. No wedding, no china. One of the many benefits that accrue to a confirmed bachelor."

"Archer, focus." She lets the pen hover over the pad. "What do you think, state historical society or Museum of the Revolution?"

"You want to give these away?"

"Yes. Of course. Why, do you want them?"

"Me?" He unwraps a saucer and holds it up to the light. "Not exactly my style. If you're serious about donating them, shouldn't we try to find the rest of the set?"

"No." She lets a long swallow of gin slide down her throat. "I wouldn't even know where to look."

_"I guess I don't have to ask how lunch went."_

__

She glares at Derek, who is calmly surveying the dining room. Her hair has come loose from its black satin headband and she is breathing heavily, sleeves rolled up. Broken pieces of antique china are scattered widely across the floor. Stacks of elegant yet-undamaged pieces rest in a leather case on the table beside her.

She hates it: the stupid pattern, the stupid padded-gauze liners storing them, the stupid eighteen-carat rim on the cups and the stupid lineage they represent. She hates it all.

She picks up a sugar bowl.

Derek tilts his head. "I should have gone with you."

"Don't be ridiculous. Your first solo complex procedure is a big deal. It's not the kind of thing a person reschedules."

And she throws the bowl, watches it break apart at his feet.

"Are you finished?" He nudges pieces of china away with one shoe. So calm, so detached, they could have been in the OR. He could have been cutting her open.

"Does it look like I'm finished?"

She rummages in one of the boxes for the smaller dessert plates she knows the Captain likes. She wants to do those next.

"I've had to sit through enough stories about these dishes, Addison. Handed down from generation to generation, survived the Revolutionary War, the historical society would kill for some of these pieces."

The dessert plate shatters satisfyingly.

"I hate them," she says. "The whole set. I hate it all. It's ugly."

"I don't really like it either, but that's no reason to destroy it. We can give it away. Make some stuffy antique dealer's day." He leans back against the wall, crossing his ankles, his tone infuriatingly mild. "You want to tell me what happened with your father?"

She picks up a delicate saucer instead, looses it like a frisbee against the floorboards. Half of it skitters under the credenza and she picks up a larger plate this time, wanting to hear a different kind of crash.

"Hey." Derek lifts an eyebrow. "Listen, you're clearly having some kind of parental-induced flip-out and I get that, but this is our home, Addie, and you're not doing this here. You're done. Put down the dish."

She raises it over her head instead.

"Put it down, Addison."

She doesn't move.

He steps carefully around the china shards on the floor to face her and extends his hand, beckoning. "Come on," he says quietly.

In the conservative heels she wore to the club, they are eye to eye. She stares at him, unmoving.

He stretches his arm full length over his head, wraps his hand around her wrist and slowly lowers it, the plate still clenched in her frozen palm. He tucks her arm against his side, like the way they'd been taught to take a patient's blood pressure, and uncurls her fingers with his other hand.

"Thank you," he says, and sets the dish down on the dining room table.

He'd been excruciatingly gentle, but she rubs her wrist meaningfully anyway, to see if she can make him feel guilty.

But all he does is close the wide leather case that holds the unbroken remains and push it to the other side of the table, out of her reach. "You're done."

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"Sit down. Have a drink. Talk it out. Like normal people."

"I'm not a normal person, I'm a Montgomery."

"You're a Shepherd now."

She scowls. "There's nothing to say."

"So no talking for you then."

He turns her around, brushing aside a few stray pieces of what used to be a serving platter with the side of his foot as he does so, and begins to knead the tight muscles of her shoulders, his thumbs loosening the knots next to her spine.

"That's nice..."

"Oh-ho, she speaks."

Addison presses her lips together.

"Admit it. This is much more civilized than your violent flatware regime."

"I want them out of here, Derek. I don't want to look at those dishes anymore."

"You won't have to." He sweeps her long hair aside to kiss her neck, folds his arms around her waist. She doesn't respond, but lets herself relax against him, just for a second. With his diaphragm against her back, his slow, deep breaths become hers.

Long minutes pass before he speaks again.

"Better?"

"Yeah." She cranes her neck, still in the circle of his arms, to see his face. "I, um, I guess I should clean up."

_"I'll do it." He kisses her cheek and releases her. "Go take a bath. You look like you could use one. This will blow over, Addie, whatever happened. It's nothing."_

It wasn't nothing. Derek had swept away all the traces of her tirade by the time she got out of the bath, but it would be nearly eight years before she saw the Captain again.

"Just flag it for donation," she tells Archer. Maybe it's not museum quality, but even an incomplete set will please the state historical society.

"You sure you don't want to keep some of these for yourself, sis? Force them on your own kids someday?"

Unlikely, at this point; she swallows the bitterness to say "I'm sure."

Archer turns a dessert plate over to look at the etching. "Hard to believe something this fragile survived a war, isn't it?"

Addison just shrugs, takes the delicate china from his hand and wraps it once again in beige gauze and memory before closing the chest with a little more force than necessary.


End file.
